Jan Garden Castro Papers, 1957-2014 | MS Manuscripts

Jan Garden Castro (1945-) is an American author, editor, poet, literary and art critic, teacher, and arts activist. Born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri, and currently residing in New York City, Castro attended Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison for her undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1967 and a 1967 certificate from the famed Radcliffe College Publishing Course, which relocated to Columbia University in 2000. In 1974 and 1994 respectively, Castro earned a Master of Arts in Teaching and English and then a Master of Arts in Art History and Comparative Literature from Washington University, Saint Louis.

Castro's extensive writing career began in 1968, while she was living in San Francisco, with features on Pablo Neruda, David Harris, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, and others published in The Daily Californian and the San Francisco Express Times. Upon returning to Saint Louis around 1970, Castro published essays, reviews, and poems in local and national underground newspapers, and national literary journals. In 1972 she married Michael Castro in Graham Chapel at Washington University, and with him and several other local poets and artists founded River Styx literary magazine in 1975. Between 1975 and 1987, Castro served as an editor of River Styx, and as its first Executive Director – leading its multicultural and interdisciplinary direction during this period. She contributed significant material to the journal during this time, including editorial direction and interviews with Margaret Atwood, Quincy Troupe, and many other well-known artists and writers. The River Styx group also organized many poetry readings and local cultural events, most notably the River Styx PM series at the Saint Louis Art Museum and Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Duff's Poetry Series, held at Duff's restaurant in the Central West End. In 1975 Castro wrote and self-published her first poetry compilation, Mandala of the Five Senses. She also served as a teacher at several local secondary schools and colleges during this period and began to review books by Atwood, Gass, Morrison, Baldwin, Garcia Marquez, and others for The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch.

In 1985 Castro's first major book was published by Crown Publishers, an art history and biography of Georgia O'Keeffe titled The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe, which had ten printings 1985-1995 and sold over 100,000 copies. In 1988 she co-edited scholarly essays on Margaret Atwood titled Margaret Atwood, Vision and Forms (Southern Illinois University Press), which had two printings. Starting in 1980 Castro taught humanities as an adjunct professor at Lindenwood College (now University) in Saint Charles, Missouri and continued to publish poems and book reviews. In addition to her publishing and teaching activities, Castro also organized a number of cultural events in the Saint Louis area, including the 1987 Heart of Saint Louis Arts festival, and traveled throughout the country giving lectures on art history and the work of Georgia O'Keeffe.

During the 1990s Castro wrote literature and art reviews for the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and the Riverfront Times. She continued to publish poetry and read her poems at local artistic and cultural events, and otherwise kept involved with local arts. Additionally, Castro received fellowships from institutes including the Camargo Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1998, Castro began writing art reviews and interviews for Sculpture Magazine and has since published more than 16 cover stories for the journal. Her involvement with Sculpture continues to the present day and has included significant interviews with and essays on Louise Bourgeois, Maya Lin, Mel Chin, Cristina Iglesias, Sanford Biggers, Ai Wei Wei, Liza Lou, and numerous artists. Castro also writes articles for Ceramics: Art and Perception, has written catalog essays for many local and national artists, and has published fiction and flash fiction online at The Adirondack Review and Great Weather for the Media.

Castro’s poetry and art collaboration with Robert Charles Smith, The Last Frontier, was published in 2001. Smith, a Washington University art professor who designed the University City lions, created letterpress and electronic images on his Eclectic Press to accompany each poem by Castro. Some copies included a CD with Castro reading her poems to original compositions by Willem Von Hombracht. Smith created handmade silk and marbled paper boxes for the first twenty copies. 

In 2001-2002, Castro guest-curated and wrote the catalog for the exhibit Sonia Delaunay: La Moderne, a retrospective on Sonia Delaunay shown in Tokyo and three regional museums in Japan, and the Jane V. Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University. Castro's master's thesis and the Delaunay retrospective were based on ten years of original primary research in Paris and other locations.

During her career Castro has published more than 425 articles, essays, and interviews for a wide variety of publishing outlets. As of March 2014 she continues to publish frequently for several publications, including Sculpture Magazine (www.sculpturemagazine.art/), www.whitehotmagazine.org/, American Book Review (www.americanbookreview.org/ ), and Woman’s Art Journal (www.womansartjournal.org/ ).